Ekin Pinar (Turkey)
1 – Middle East Technical University
Ekin Pinar
Ekin Pinar received her Ph.D. from the History of Art department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of interest include modern and contemporary art, cinema studies, history and theory of animation, expanded cinema, exhibition practices, experimental ethnography, gender and sexuality studies, and history of experimental film and visual culture. She is a lecturer at the History of Art and Architecture program at the Middle East Technical University.
Abstract
This paper argues that the experimental cut-out animation of Larry Jordan demonstrates a strong interest in the cinematic construction of places, settings, and sites, one that reflects an understanding of place as a blend of history, memory, fantasy, and experience. Since the early 1960s, Jordan’s animations have appropriated a variety of still imagery, ranging from Victorian engravings and paintings to archival photographs. By transforming these materials through cut-out stop-motion techniques, these animations evoke an indexical relation to the outside world. Inasmuch as an index constitutes a trace of an object and bears an existential relation to it, Jordan’s dense tapestry of collaged ephemera serves as an index of the Victorian era. But the stop-motion manipulation also renders these indexical documents surreal through the juxtaposition of apparently unrelated images. Blending extensive archival research with a close visual analysis of Patricia Gives Birth to a Dream by the Doorway (1964) and The Centennial Exposition (1964), I contend that Jordan’s work focuses on the historiography of actual and imaginary places through an emphasis on the productive tension not just between still and moving imagery, but between indexicality and illusion as well. Rather than securely embalming the places of the past in their historical context, Jordan’s use of stop-motion exposes histories of places as fragmentary constructions open to alteration, re-reading, and reconfiguration.
Palavras-chave: cut-out animation, Larry Jordan, place, indexicality, historical documents
